by Joan Mellen
Near the end of February, de Torres told Fowler he had “new information.” With the help of del Valle, he had identified the stocky Latin in the photograph with Oswald as a Lebanese businessman and pilot named Roberto Verdaguer. Major Verdaguer had in fact been Castro’s air force chief, who, with his brother Guillermo, had brought in a Cuban air freighter, requesting political asylum in the United States. He was hardly the Lebanese businessman de Torres claimed him to be.
Garrison now cut de Torres loose. On the morning of March 2, 1967, de Torres gave the CIA his final report on Jim Garrison. On paper, the Agency says it told de Torres to take this information to the FBI. Meanwhile they informed their own Soviet Russia section, as well as the FBI.
For the HSCA, Gaeton Fonzi discovered that de Torres’ CIA handler had been Paul Bethel. One of Fonzi’s Miami sources, “Juan Adames,” revealed that de Torres had admitted to him that he knew Oswald and “knows some of the people who were involved in it.” He and de Torres had forged documents for hit teams, meeting in Cuban hangouts all over Florida, Adames told Fonzi. De Torres had “direct access to Santos Trafficante, who did in fact exhibit foreknowledge of the Kennedy assassination. Kennedy “is going to be hit,” Trafficante told José Aleman a year before the event.” And de Torres had been “pretty edgy” about this new HSCA investigation.
Further evidence of the complicity of de Torres in the events that he was ostensibly helping Jim Garrison to investigate includes a Justice Department document of March 14, 1967. A Cuban-American had gone to the FBI with information received from Arceli Mastrapa, a secretary at the Cuban embassy in Mexico City: “Cuban exile Bernardo Torres at Miami had developed evidence that it was a Cuban refugee group which had carried out the assassination of President Kennedy.”
“One day, sooner or later, they’re gonna come and talk to me,” de Torres said.
“Well, did anybody [you know] have anything to do with it?” Adames said.
“They will never find out what happened,” Bernardo said. Did he believe Oswald killed Kennedy?
“I don’t believe it because I know some of the people who were involved in it,” de Torres said, as he admitted he worked with the CIA. When Adames denied he himself had any connection to the Agency, de Torres said, “Well, we all say that.”
Fonzi discovered from an FBI report that a man named Arturo Cobos identified de Torres as “the man to call with contacts on a high level with the CIA in Washington.” A 1969 document identifies de Torres as working for “Pentagon intelligence.”
A person who knew de Torres well was a “terrorist” named Rolando Otero, already a Fonzi source.
Both Bernardo de Torres and E. Howard Hunt had been involved in the Kennedy assassination, Otero, who had already talked to the FBI, told Fonzi, echoing Adames. “Oswald was a CIA agent.” A decade after Jim Garrison’s investigation, his suspicions that the CIA had plotted the murder were being confirmed. Otero had demonstrated his credibility. He knew what few did, for example, that Robert Kennedy had sent a representative from the criminal division of the Justice Department to Dallas on the day President Kennedy was killed. That man was Walter Sheridan. De Torres had “worked with Oswald,” even as de Torres had posed “as a photographer at Dealey Plaza.”
Adames confirmed that de Torres had in his possession photographs taken during the assassination.
When de Torres was subpoenaed by the HSCA, Fonzi wrote out a long list of questions: Had his penetration of Garrison’s office been “motivated by his relationship with any United States intelligence agency or any person?” Had he reported on Jim Garrison’s investigation to any Agency or person? Had he supplied false information to Garrison? With what agencies was he associated at that time and what functions did he perform “on their behalf?” Fonzi already knew of de Torres’ telephone calls to CIA about his appearance before the committee, calls registered to “McLean, Virginia,” as calls to the CIA always were.
In Washington, Fonzi’s researcher Edwin Lopez requested that the CIA give the House Committee its files on Bernardo de Torres. Five or six sanitized documents appeared. Lopez complained to chief counsel G. Robert Blakey, only for thirteen more documents to arrive. But at the bottom of one page, someone had forgotten to erase a number. Lopez then requested of the CIA all documents relating to that number, purposely not mentioning the name “Bernardo Gonzalez de Torres Alvarez.” Suddenly a cartload of documents arrived.
As he had placed the HSCA under the control of the CIA from the day he replaced Richard A. Sprague, Blakey and his deputy, Gary Cornwell, accepted Bernardo de Torres’ request for immunity. Then, as if this weren’t questionable enough, Blakey permitted a visit from the CIA right before de Torres was interviewed. The CIA demanded that the committee not ask de Torres anything about the time frame when de Torres was its operative, a period that included the Kennedy assassination. Accusing de Torres of being a double agent, working as well for Castro, which seems a preposterous claim, the CIA departed with Blakey’s assurances. Virtually moments later, an FBI emissary appeared. The Bureau proposed its own time period about which de Torres must not be questioned. Blakey acquiesced in everything the CIA and the FBI requested.
Fonzi watched as de Torres finally entered the room, with “an air of dapper and casual confidence.” Here, Fonzi thought, was a true professional. Government lawyer William Triplett told de Torres he was no longer bound by “any prior secrecy oath to the CIA,” as if the committee were not itself bound by secret agreements with the Agency.
Asked how he came to work for Jim Garrison, de Torres evaded. “I don’t know how I was chosen by him,” he lied. He never met Frank Sturgis or Howard Hunt, de Torres claimed. All he knew about David Ferrie he had learned from Garrison. “I never worked for the CIA,” de Torres lied. “I never talked to anybody associated with the CIA.” He possessed no photographs of the assassination, and did not know the pockmarked, stocky Cuban Garrison sought. He had never met Oswald. “I have never been contacted by a CIA member, to my knowledge,” de Torres repeated. Representative Christopher Dodd was not quite ready to let him go. “Have you ever been an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency?” Dodd demanded in the face of de Torres’ denials.
“No, sir,” de Torres said.
Fonzi sat, spellbound. This guy has so much faith in the protective shell the Agency provided that he doesn’t need to exhibit an iota of arrogance, Fonzi thought. If an uninformed outsider were sitting in the room, he would have wondered why, of all the hundreds of thousands of Cubans in Miami, we picked this guy to call to Washington.
Jim Garrison now focused on two “wildcat Cubans,” Miguel Torres and Emilio Santana. Partners in crime in New Orleans, they dined, rumor had it, with an Oswald friend named “Chico” at an apartment in the 1300 block of Dauphine Street, where Clay Shaw lived. (In December of 1962, five months before his arrival in New Orleans, a “tall man, about 6-foot tall and dark complected, a man with a slight mustache,” who signed a Christmas card “Chico,” had visited Oswald in Texas.)
Garrison was aware, as Gaeton Fonzi was to put it, that “in almost every incident of a known Cuban association with Oswald, that individual has a direct tie with other Cubans or a Cuban organization headquartered in Miami.” For help in locating his Miami suspects, Jim Garrison turned to the Miami/Dade States Attorney, tough, one-eyed, free-wheeling Richard Gerstein, the only district attorney in the country willing to help him.
“Don’t waste your time,” Gerstein’s administrative assistant, Seymour Gelber, told Gerstein.
“He’s a fellow district attorney,” Gerstein said.
Gerstein placed his own chief investigator, Martin F. Dardis, at the disposal of Garrison’s investigators Lester Otillio and Douglas Ward, as they sought the short, stocky Cuban photographed with Oswald. If he could find this Cuban, Garrison believed, “we will have the other murderer of President Kennedy.” Garrison nicknamed his Cuban suspects: El Guapo; El Gravo; El Toro. As “El Indio,” CIA asset David Sanchez Morales ha
d been involved with David Atlee Phillips in the CIA’s overthrow of President Arbenz.
Dardis, his soft blue eyes and strawberry-blond hair notwithstanding, was a hard-boiled cynic who had earned a silver star at the Battle of the Bulge. Already he knew that the CIA’s Cuban cadre was receiving checks from Eastern Airlines and Sears, among other companies, and the checks were drawn on the First National Bank of Miami. CIA’s JMWAVE enjoyed free rein from the local FBI, Border Patrol, INS, Customs, the Coast Guard, the FCC, the Navy and, of course, the local police.
There was no paper trail Dardis could not follow, as in later years he demonstrated by being perhaps the single most important figure in helping Woodward and Bernstein unravel the money trail in the Watergate case, the brouhaha over Mark Felt notwithstanding. Garrison told Dardis that the name of the Cuban in question was “Manuel García Gonzalez,” a name he had pried out of Dean Andrews. He hangs around Cuban bars. He carries a red toolbox and fixes boats, Garrison said.
“I should be able to find him,” Dardis said, finding the request absurd. “I knew you could,” Garrison said, missing Dardis’ irony. Garrison had nicknamed this Cuban “Bugs Bunny.”
At the airport to meet Garrison’s investigators, Dardis held up a sign echoing the nickname Ward enjoyed at Tulane and Broad: “Mr. Wonderful.” “I’m not getting you any women,” Dardis said, aware of Pershing’s role. Like Lou Ivon, Dardis had utter contempt for Gervais.
Dardis by himself telephoned every marina in Miami until he found the Cuban with the red toolbox. It was the wrong man. Garrison assistant James Alcock arrived, but Miami police intelligence offered little help. Alphonso L. Tarabochia, in charge of monitoring Cuban refugees and the Cuban underworld in Miami, honored Dardis’ request and put Alcock in touch with José Antonio Lanuza of the DRE. He had seen “El Toro,” before, Lanuza said, evasively, but could not identify him.
Alcock met Laureano Batista, who ran a training camp north of Lake Pontchartrain, and learned of how right-wing National States Rights Party member Joseph Milteer had predicted the triangulated gunfire of the assassination “from an office building with a high-powered rifle” in a February 9, 1963, tape made by a Miami police intelligence informant named Willie Somersett. Milteer knew that there would be a scapegoat. “Oh, somebody is going to have to go to jail,” he had speculated. “Just like Bruno Hauptmann in the Lindbergh case.” The Miami police had altered President Kennedy’s November 18th itinerary, canceling the motorcade.
Somersett later told Jim Garrison that Milteer had telephoned him from Dallas at 10:30 A.M. on November 22nd. “Kennedy would probably never return to Miami,” Milteer had said. “Don’t worry about your friend, Jack. We’re going to take care of him today.” Even Bernardo de Torres would insist that the Secret Service had been warned that Kennedy was in danger, although they denied it.
Alberto Fowler continued to work for Jim Garrison, whom he found simpático. He remained loyal, so that when David Chandler’s wife Patricia asked him for photographs of the Cubans whom Garrison was investigating, Alberto sent her to Laureano Batista in Miami, giving her nothing.
“Poor Jim is swimming upstream,” Alberto told his son. Alberto agreed with Jim Garrison that Kennedy “was taken out by the military industrial complex,” and that CIA employees had been involved in the plot. They were making a ton of money in Texas after Kennedy died, he noted. Fowler also believed that Carlos Bringuier was aware of Oswald’s affiliation with the CIA, and that the two of them had “staged their confrontation on Canal Street.”
One day Alberto, his wife Paulette, and their two children were at dinner at their home in the Garden district. Suddenly a brick came crashing through the window, landing in the middle of the table. Dishes broke. Glass shattered. A note was attached to the brick: “We know you’re working for the Garrison investigation.”
“Get the shotgun!” Alberto yelled very loudly. There was no gun in the house. Alberto hated guns.
“I should think twice about working on the Garrison investigation,” an anonymous caller soon whispered. “We can have someone look at your taxes.”
“My taxes are fine,” Alberto said.
“I don’t think you understand,” the caller said. “There will be a mistake on your taxes.”
Now Alberto did go out and buy a gun.
TIGER BY THE TAIL
7
[The district attorney] knows he’s got a tiger by the tail.
—David Ferrie
ON VALENTINE’S DAY, 1967, Emilio Santana, who had worked for the CIA from the first night he arrived in the United States, was interviewed at Tulane and Broad. Short-staffed, Garrison permitted Carlos Bringuier to interview Santana. In a matter of days, Bringuier was warning J. Edgar Hoover: Garrison was putting the blame for the assassination not only on the CIA, but “on you!” something Garrison never did.
Knowing that Garrison hoped that Santana would place Sergio Arcacha Smith in New Orleans during the summer of 1963, corroborating David Lewis’ testimony, Bringuier attempted to steer Santana into stating that the person he met representing Alpha 66 was not Arcacha, but one Luis Bretos. Thomas Edward Beckham could have corroborated that Arcacha had visited New Orleans that summer, but he was to be among the most elusive of Garrison witnesses.
For Santana’s polygraph the next day, the translator was Alberto Fowler. Had he met Miguel Torres at a 1963 dinner in the 1300 block of Dauphine Street hosted by Arcacha? Santana said no, and the machine registered deception. Santana was asked about a piano player named “Jean Vales.” When he said he didn’t know “Jean Vales,” the machine signaled its alarm. Was the similarity between the names “Jean Vales” and “Juan Valdes” the reason? Garrison wondered.
Meanwhile, interviewed at Parish Prison, Miguel Torres said Santana had definitely been at that dinner where the subject was “revolutionary actions with regard to Cuba.” During his polygraph, when Torres denied that he knew Clay Shaw, the machine revealed that he, too, was lying.
Garrison pondered more propinquities. Oswald had used as a job reference a man who lived at 2705 Magazine Street, while Torres said he met Santana often at the 2700 block of Magazine. A witness who could have helped Garrison with respect to Santana was a contractor named Woodrow H. Hardy, but Hardy confided only in his lawyer, Samuel Exnicios. Hardy worked for Clay Shaw, supervising the renovations of his many French Quarter properties. By the summer of 1963, Woodrow Hardy had worked for Shaw for years and had his own key to the patio door of Shaw’s house at 1313 Dauphine Street. Hardy was accustomed to letting himself in when he had work to do.
It was twelve noon, an hour when Hardy did not expect to find Shaw at home. He let himself in through the patio door only to discover in the big downstairs room, deep in conversation, Clay Shaw, David Ferrie and Lee Harvey Oswald. Usually Shaw made time to talk to Hardy about construction matters. Now, Shaw rose quickly to his feet. Firmly, he ushered Hardy out the door.
“I’m engaged in a conference right now,” Shaw said.
After the assassination, having recognized Oswald, having read of witnesses in the case dying, Hardy feared for his life. Hardy told his lawyer that he had seen Shaw, Ferrie and Oswald together only because Sam’s brother, Hugh Exnicios, had been in some trouble over the Garrison investigation.
Jim Garrison did receive an anonymous letter naming Hardy. Hardy had told the author of the letter that he had seen many Cubans visiting Shaw. Among them was “Emilio Santana.” The letter, which Garrison could not follow up, was signed, “a citizen who believes in your case.”
Orestes Peña knew Santana as “Juan Elerio Cabellero,” a member of the CIA’s clandestine services.
Carlos Bringuier laughed to himself when he passed Garrison’s polygraph. He had denied being contacted by the CIA, and the machine did not demur. It wasn’t a lie because it was at his own request that he had at least four interviews with the CIA by then. Even New Orleans CIA officer Hunter Leake registered discomfort at this.
As Garrison sought
still the stocky, swarthy Cuban with the pockmarked complexion, Billings dubbed him “Oswald’s Latin shepherd.” Could he have been “Angelo,” the heavier man at Sylvia Odio’s? Dallas deputy sheriff Roger Craig spoke of the driver of a station wagon who was “very dark complected,” with “real dark short hair.”
Dallas district attorney Henry Wade identified a “dark complected Latin with long black hair, and a stocky build,” a man with “numerous bumps on his face” sitting with Oswald at Ruby’s Carousel Club. The issue of Ruby’s acquaintance with Oswald was, from the earliest days, part of Garrison’s focus. Thomas Edward Beckham confirms that Oswald and Ruby knew each other. Even without Beckham’s testimony, Garrison knew this was true. The owner of Bruning’s Seafood Restaurant told Tommy Baumler, then working for Banister, that he had seen Oswald and Ruby together. Baumler was informed about a telephone operator who overheard a conversation between Ruby and Oswald with Ruby in New Orleans and Oswald already back in Texas. When the operator came forward, the FBI ignored her. Sam (Monk) Zelden, was the attorney for a trucking firm to which Oswald applied for employment. Among Oswald’s three job references was Jack Ruby.
The Dallas evidence, too, is rich in examples of people testifying to having seen Oswald at the Carousel Club. Among them is ventriloquist-magician Bill DeMar, who performed the week before the assassination when he spotted Oswald in the audience. Interviewed by the Warren Commission, DeMar was perplexed when, for purposes of identification, he was given a photograph of a young man on the stage with a stripper who didn’t even work at Ruby’s club. Oswald had been sitting at a table, DeMar remembers. He had never been on the stage.
